Early man and the ocean : a search for the beginnings of navigation and seaborne civilizations

When Thor Heyerdahl sailed the Kon-Tiki, a primitive balsa raft, from Peru to Polynesia, he was attempting to prove that American culture from Pre-Incan times could have reached those distant lands. And when he piloted Ra II, an Egyptian reed boat, from North Africa to the shores of the Caribbean, he was trying to show how men from the earliest known civilizations could have reached the New World by sea. This rich collection of essays, filled with facts and speculations on subjects ranging from primitive navigation techniques, ocean winds and currents to Columbus, the Vikings, and the striking similarities between cultures separated by legions of ocean, is the result of such explorations, the hard core of what Heyerdahl learned and the work for which he will ultimately be remembered. Here is the compelling evidence for his long time theory that men were crossing the oceans - spreading both their cultures and there genes - thousands of years before Columbus. Based upon the author's famous maritime expeditions and upon his explorations in South and Central America and Mexico, this book demonstrates how reed-boat travelers crossed the Atlantic in early historic times and brought a high civilization to the Americas, and how the newly civilized people of the Americas in turn brought culture to Easter Island and the Central Pacific by balsa raft Presents Heyerdahl's original research into ancient oceanic voyages, including the Kon-Tiki and Ra expeditions, which support his theories about prehistoric voyagers traveling across the southern Atlantic to Mexico Discusses the ships, navigational systems, achievements, and discoveries of ancient seamen and examines their influence on the spread of culture in the ancient world and on subsequent exploration.